Walker Warner Architects

If you look into the history of the Big Island–and architect Greg Warner has–you will find that when the land that once belonged to Hawaiian royalty passed into the private ownership, much of the property was divided into large ranches, which stretched from the mountain down to the ocean. These ranches had wonderful acreage, most of it at higher elevations where there was frequent rain. But near the shore? There was sunshine, and the great ocean camps where cowboys and their families would come down to spend weekends. To try to recapture that feeling of Old Hawaii in a new house would be a romantic notion, so say the least. Turns out, Greg Warner is a romantic.

Asked to create a “camp-like” family compound with traditional hale buildings on the Kona coast of the Big Island, Walker-Warner Architects designed a four-building retreat (circa 2010) that invokes a casual, simpler era.

“It’s an old time-y house; the scale and the form of the buildings recalls a lot off the old classic territorial architecture of the day,” says Greg Warner, who was raised in Hawaii. “This was an exercise in recreating my early memories of these great old places that were built during the transitional time when the plantations were there.”

ZAK Architecture - Kohanaiki Clubhouse

From ZAK Architecture's Website:

‘Primitive Hut’ is what I had in mind when designing the Clubhouse for Kohanaiki. A simple open indoor/outdoor building where the air can blow though and the views open wide to the horizon of the Pacific. The architecture is clean, balanced and unadorned. It’s beauty is felt in the materials, balance and proportion. The architecture is calm and frames the rugged natural beauty of the Kona cost.

Now, the offered activities at Kohanaiki Clubhouse are very inclusive, so we had to use several ‘huts’ to make a Clubhouse Village. Each of the individual buildings has it’s own simple roof form, arranged carefully to make a village plan. I think of it not as a building with a landscape around it but as many smaller and more intimate buildings place within a landscape. One walks through the landscape to get from place to place.

The site for the Clubhouse is unique. It is placed high up on a plinth, like the acropolis. Or as I like to think of it, it is like the national historic site of Puʻukoholā Heiau (Temple on the Hill of the Whale), located just up the Queens Highway near Kawaihae and built by King Kamehameha. This was a massive stone plinth on top of which a temple was placed. The stone plinth still stands today.

It is the assemble of these simple timeless Hawaiian elements such as Hut and Stone Plinth together with Fire and Water that give this Clubhouse Village meaning and belonging on this beautiful Kona coast.